In early May a delegation of the Austrian-Yugoslav Solidarity
Movement
(JVSB) came to Kosovska Mitrovica in order to:

express our demand to free the political prisoners from UNMIK
incarceration

express our support to the remaining non-Albanians in the Ghetto
of Kosovska Mitrovica

investigate the local situation without media manipulation

****
Pictures and a map of the demarcation line between the multi-national
North
and the albanised South can be found under: www.vorstadtzentrum.net/joesb
****

Hunger strike of the political prisoners

As reported in our declaration of April 24th, 2000, the event that
triggered
the decision for the hunger strike was the release of the Albanian
Dzeljalj
Ademi, who had injured 22 civilians and 14 KFOR soldiers in an
anti-Serb
hand-grenade attack, while the non-Albanian prisoners remain
incarcerated
for months without trial. The prisoners demand investigations for a
trial.
The most blatant case is a 16-year old boy who was arrested for
genocide
last summer.

Another case worth mentioning is a Serb man called Jaksimovic from the
vicinity of Orahovac, who was stopped by UNMIK at a road block. An
Albanian
whose hand had been injured by gunfire and who was at the site by
chance,
claimed that Mr Jaksimovic was the person who had injured him, and Mr
Jaksimovic was immediately arrested by UNMIK soldiers. One of Mr
Jaksimovic's fellow travellers who is Albanian heard that the other
Albanian was told by passers-by to point at "the guy with the
beard"
(i.e. Jaksimovic) and to claim that he was responsible.

In general the accusations are completely arbitrary and politically
motivated. The witnesses are arbitrarily selected and their
testimonies are
first of all determined by their loyalty to the aims of the KLA , as
the comport of the judges. The few Serb judges that had existed all
resigned, because their personal safety could not be guaranteed. They
also
protested against the partiality of the UNMIK judicial system. The
discrimination between Albanians and non-Albanians proves, that Serbs
and
Romanies are being held in prison for political and ethnical reasons
and not
for concrete offences of law; they are political prisoners of the UN.

Two of the hunger strikers are in a critical state. One of them fell
into
coma. Nevertheless UNMIK does not allow doctors nor journalists to
visit the prisoners. Now also relatives of the prisoners started a
hunger strike. They organise daily protest manifestations in front of
the prison, in which
thousands of people participate. The JVSB representative expressed his
solidarity with the gathered crowd.

As delegates of the aid organisation Humanitas we tried hard to get
permission to see the prisoners. The local UNMIC police commander,
Sven Erik Larson, actually told us that most accusations of the Serb
and Romany
prisoners against the UNMIK judiciary are justified. Nevertheless he
did not
grant us permission to visit the prisoners, but sent us to Pristina.
In
Pristina our demand was refused by Edita Ryan, who is the competent
NGO liaison officer and who called Humanitas an organisation that
illegally
operates in Kosovo.

We call upon everyone to join our campaign for the release of the
political
prisoners and to step up pressure on UNMIK by organising further
visits to
the prison of Kosovska Mitrovica.

Kosovo impressions

In fact the North of Kosovo which is not under KLA control is the only
multi-national part of Kosovo - even after the war. Here are some
concrete
examples:

Kaplan Beruti in Svecan. The chief presiding judge of Kosovska
Mitrovica,
the Albanian Kaplan Beruti, who is actually responsible for the
arbitrary
incarceration of the Serbs and Romanies who went on hunger strike, is
living
in Svecan, north of Kosovska Mitrovica, a village that is
predominantly
Serbian, and he lives there without KFOR protection. His children go
to a
local school.

Serb refugees in Albanian houses in Banjska: On the premises of this
monastery in the northern mountains there are several week-end
cottages
owned by Albanians. Now Serb refugees from the South live in these
houses. We asked about the former owners and were surprised to hear
that they are living in the northern part of Kosovska Mitrovica and
that they were even paid rent for these houses.

Albanians in daily life: Asking several Serbs about the Albanian flats
and
houses in Kosovo Mitrovica that are under tight KFOR protection, we
were
always told that there is a significant difference between KLA
followers
whose flats serve as KLA bases, and Albanians who are loyal to
Yugoslavia. The latter can live there without any problems.

The impressions from the southern part of Kosovo are completely
different.
Destroyed Romany quarter: At the road from Kosovska Mitrovica to
Pristina only 10-20% of the houses seem to be burnt. The Romany
quarter of southern Kosovska Mitrovica is completely devastated, burnt
down and razed to the ground. UCK racist national ideology obviously
was fully realised here.

UNMIK official warns us of deadly danger: We went to the UNMIK office
for NGOs in Pristina in order to obtain a permit to visit the
prisoners of
Kosovska Mitrovica. When the official in charge, Edita Ryan, saw our
letter
that was written in Cyrillic, she told us immediately that we must not
show
this letter to anybody, because this could be our death sentence; she
also
said that she was saying so "off records." She even
discouraged us to have
it translated into English within Kosovo.

Albanian taxi driver speaks Serbo-Croatian: Due to the many warnings
we
avoided speaking Serbian to the driver who brought us from Mitrovica
to
Pristina and back. When we realised that he was listening to Serbian
radio
and was cursing in Serbian, we started talking to him in Russian. He
felt
completely at ease speaking Serbian. When we got of the car, he
urgently
reminded us not to utter a single word of Serbian on the streets,
because
this was very dangerous.

There is a system behind the persecution of
non-Albanians

The political and ethnic persecution of Serbs and Romanies by the UN
judiciary is only the tip of the iceberg. NATO/UNO, based on the KLA,
actually formed a regime that oppresses and discriminates against all
non-Albanians in order to finally expel them and to deprive the
integrity of
Yugoslavia of its demographical legitimacy. While KLA and its
successor
organisation TMK respectively were demilitarised only very
superficially
(only heavy weapons), and there constantly are attacks against
non-Albanians - these attacks claimed more than 1,000 lives since the
beginning of the NATO occupation - Serb forces were completely
stripped of their weapons, thus depriving them of the ability for
self-defence. This
means a death sentence for many of those who are determined to stay,
because due to "lack of capacity" they are not granted KFOR
protection. Only the convoys of fleeing non-Albanians are granted
protection.

Re-settlement: Kouchner and other representatives of the so-called
international community say that it is still to early to bring the
non-Albanian refugees to the South of Kosovo; but at the same time in
the
North of Kosovska Mitrovica, KFOR is trying by means of force to bring
Albanian refugees to their houses. There is proof that UCK fighters
are also
infiltrated, brought to the North of Kosovska Mitrovica: There were
sniper
attacks from the three Albanian tall buildings that were recently
re-settled.

Elections: There is also proof that UNO/KFOR is not a neutral
mediator, but a motive force. They plan to organise elections for a
protectorate
government on the base of the present ethnic composition, to preserve
the
expulsion of 300,000 non-Albanians and the settlement of an unknown
number of Albanians from the North of Albania.

Yugoslavia is the only multi-national state of the
Balkans

The war triggered by the KLA with the support of the west and
transformed by NATO into a war against the whole of Yugoslavia,
claimed a total of 2,108 victims counted on both sides. But just a
year of NATO protectorate already claimed the lives of more than one
thousand non-Albanians! In spite of ardent ethnic conflicts there had
not been expulsions and "ethnic
cleansing" under Yugoslav rule in Kosovo. Even when UCK fuelled
the spiral of violence with their terrorist attacks since 1997, there
were hardly any refugees. When the fighting subsided, most refugees
returned. The "Horseshoe Plan" ("Potkovica Plan")
turned out to be a secret service propaganda forgery. Only after the
NATO bombardments started, refugees started to flee in large numbers.
Now, under the rule of UCK and NATO, there actually is systematic
"ethnic cleansing" that had earlier been attributed to
Yugoslav forces. 300,000 non-Albanians have been expelled and the few
that remained are constantly threatened, and KFOR refuses to protect
them seriously.

In spite of the disintegrating tendencies and internal tensions,
Yugoslavia
still is a multi-ethnic state and as such is the only possible form of
peaceful co-existence of the ethnically mixed peoples of the Balkans.
It was
the West that used the "right of ethnic-territorial
self-determination" as
a crowbar against Yugoslavia. That necessarily lead to a civil war.
The Serb
people was and is the heart of Yugoslavia and had relinquished its
ethnic
interests in favour of this common state. So when now the other
peoples of
Yugoslavia revoke this federation, it is only just, when Serbia also
defends
her national interests. But the decisive difference between the Serbs
and
the other peoples is, that the latter became slaves of the New World
Order,
while the Serbian people is fighting against the new NATO tyranny.

This is why Kosovo has to remain a part of Yugoslavia, why the
refugees have
to return and why UCK and NATO have to vanish!

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